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way hybrids between Z. pilosellcB. and we did not know exactly what. 

 So strongly was this impressed upon us that throughout our stay 

 we called the insect, /ra tem., as we did not know its correct name, 

 '''■ Zygcena hybrida." But our suspicions proved to be altogether 

 baseless, and we finally came to the conclusion that Z. achillecz was 

 as morally pure as its relatives which haunted the flowers and 

 fought with it for a place at the honied treasures to be found there. 



By no means so variable a species as some of its congeners, 

 Zygcena achillecB was also more restricted in its range. Except in 

 the flower-besprinkled openings in the larch woods, beneath the 

 arching boughs that rise up and up the steep mountain slopes, we 

 did not meet with the species, but there we found it in great 

 abundance. They were not in tens but in hundreds, perhaps in 

 thousands. 



A quiet retired Burnet is Zygcena achilkce, not at all like the 

 assertive bundling Z. filipendulce, who will force himself on our 

 attention, but a quiet insect that loves to rest in ease and retire- 

 ment, and which, in spite of its bright colours, is able when its 

 bright scarlet hind wings are covered, to rest well on the top of the 

 flowers of many different kinds of plants without exposing itself too 

 freely to the gaze of the rude and inquisitive eye. Its colours in 

 some way do not appear so conspicuous as do those of others of 

 its near relations. Inconspicuous colours ! you exclaim, then it 

 cannot be much like a Burnet moth. But it is though. A fine 

 typical Burnet moth, with the characteristic five red spots — two at 

 the base, two in the centre, and one towards the tip of the wing. 

 But this outer spot is a strange one. It is large and expanded, 

 almost as if it had joined a spot similar to the transverse streak 

 which occurs in Z. carniolica, and then being ashamed of its bright 

 tints had in its modesty restricted it as much as possible, but still 

 left a rather large addition to the round spot we are accustomed to 

 see near the apex of the wing. The moth is not always too strongly 

 scaled either, and in this respect reminds one of Z. exulans, and, 

 like the latter, it varies much in the intensity of the colour and in 

 the closeness of the scales ; like the latter, too, a great deal of the 

 difference appears to be sexual, the females being more thinly 

 scaled than the males. The female also is of a rather different 

 tint, being much more bronzy than her lord and master, and hence 

 there is very fairly defined sexual dimorphism in the species. I 

 once saw a female Z. achillece drying its wings, and I took a lazy 

 fit, sat down among the trefoils and gentians by the side of a 

 barberry bush on which the glowing fuchsia-like fruits hung pendent 

 in brilliant beauty, to watch it complete the operation. The wings 

 hung down limp and flaccid with the iTioist fluid between the upper 

 and lower membranes of which the wing is formed. Soon the fluid 

 disappeared as coagulation set in, the wings became stiffened, and 

 slowly they were folded back over the insect's body. How lovely 

 were those wings ! The bright crimson spots were set in a lovely 



